Discuss the latest comic book news and front page articles, read or post your own reviews of comics, and talk about anything comic book related. Threads from the two subforums below will also show up here. News Stand topics can also be read and posted in from The Asylum.

If you can't make it to your local comic shop, a digital copy can be found here.

Ze rules:

Review as often or as little as you like. Once you've posted 5 reviews, you will be awarded 1 pick. You can post 5 reviews, right? That's a totally achievable goal and with day and date digital releases becoming the standard, it shouldn't matter if your shop ordered enough copies of this weeks comic or not.

When multiple Review Groupers have posted 5 (or more) qualifying reviews, they will be awarded their pick in the order that they qualified. What constitutes a qualifying review? Any review posted (with a score on a scale from 0-10, that's right 0!) within 1 calendar month of the thread going live. Reviews are to be at least 5 sentences long. It shows that a) you have at least read this week's pick and b) you have some unique insight into the comic.

Reviews posted while waiting in line for your pick will be applied to your next pick.

I'll be keeping track of everyone's progress with the newly christened Spreadsheet of Fantastic (RIP, Spreadsheet of Doom) and reporting the results in the Current Members list in the weekly OP. When it's your turn to make a pick, I will PM you. If you do not respond to me by Midnight EST the following Sunday, you will lose your pick and I will start a poll to determine that week's selection.

Any week in which we do not have a Review Grouper with 5 qualifying picks, we will determine the week's comic via poll.

If it's your week to pick, remember to keep it under $3.99.

Naturally, this new system is new and it may be necessary to make changes as we go.

First off, this was really a Black Panther solo issue (hardly what I would start a new team book with). If you're not a big T'Challa fan (and I havet been on the edge for a while) there's little to keep you interested.

So the book opens in Wakanda, where there's zero evidence that it was destroyed by Namor just a few months ago. One good tidbit to take from this is that Hickman might be trying to get everyone to forget AvX. If not it's a glaring omission.

Anyway, a sluttly girl who I thought was Darkstar magically appears with a ton of armed goons behind her. So what does one of the kid's T'Challa with do? He cheerfully welcomes them to Wakanda. Predicting the only outcome of this greeting takes no effort (they must grow the kids extremely dumb in Wakanda nowadays (which is odd because all the word heavy first few pages were about how smart they are)).

Anyway, stupid kids get killed, baddies set some 'wheel' in motion and Panther knocks out bare-midriff-girl. All better right? Wrong.

Things get so unexplainedly bad that Stark, Richards, Strange, Rogers, Namor & Blackbolt all show up. Would have been nice for there to at least have been a hint as to "why" things got so bad.

And this is one of Hickman's foils. He setting up a mystery that will probably need 43 issues to explain. He tries to grab the reader into an undefined mystery when he should be trying to grab the reader into the book instead. It appears to me he thinks 'his' story is more important than the characters. It isn't and imo, it never will be.

Epting has always been a solid artist and he is his usual good self here (and draws a REAL Captain America (not that movie/ultraexageratted chainmail thing that appears more and more often).

And Namor is in Wakanda? And the Wakandan soldiers aren't even trying to point their guns at him? What the Wakandan fuck?

I've said it ages ago and I'm still saying, Hickman isn't as good as he (or Hab) thinks he is.

So, here we are, a new era for Marvel – the NOW! Era – and with that comes a new volume of everything, including Avengers and New Avengers, both written by Jonathan Hickman. Yippee! I tried, I really did, and I read both of these comics with an open mind. I figured that if I could learn to like The Avengers I could learn to like Hickman.

I was wrong.

Focusing on New Avengers nothing sums up my feelings on the issue like fellow Outhouse writer, Punchy:

“This was probably the worst Marvel Now book I have read so far, just the very worst Hickman clichés all in one package.”

There you go, if you want a comic that is not new reader friendly, doesn’t explain anything, presents the first part of an undefined mystery, and provides absolutely nothing that would inspire a reader to care about what happens next, New Avengers #1 is for you.

Here’s your synopsis – Something weird happens in Wakkanda (don’t worry, it’s not explained) and the answers to what happened (no idea what that was, I think some teenagers died) and the books ends on a dramatic cliffhanger with more questions than answers. No, this isn’t a review of S.H.I.EL.D. #1 (2, 3, 4, 5, or 6) or any of the other comics Hickman has written that follows this same formula. Best part is it will only take 20 or so issues for the mystery to be clearly defined – nor for it to be solved – but for us to know what is going on.

I don’t know when it happened, and there are arguments as to who exactly is to blame for this, but it seems that there is a new group of mainstream writers that are more interested in writing THE Avengers / THE X-Men / THE InsertBookNameHere story / THE run that will be put on the same list as Claremont’s X-Men, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Joe Kelly’s Deadpool , or even Wolfman and Perez on Teen Titans rather than put in the work to write a coherent comic book that will stand the test of time, not flame out after a year or so. And, from what I can tell, Hickman is leading that charge.

By halfway through the issue I was dreading turning the page to see what would (not) happen next.

Stephen H. Epting’s pencils are spot on. The art in this issue created a nice flow that did its best to communicate what was happening in a clear and easy to follow manner, too bad about the story.

One silver lining, I had already broken my rule on no new monthlies with Avengers Arena, at least now I can save money and drop two books: New Avengers and Avengers.

So, here we are, a new era for Marvel – the NOW! Era – and with that comes a new volume of everything, including Avengers and New Avengers, both written by Jonathan Hickman. Yippee! I tried, I really did, and I read both of these comics with an open mind. I figured that if I could learn to like The Avengers I could learn to like Hickman.

I was wrong.

Focusing on New Avengers nothing sums up my feelings on the issue like fellow Outhouse writer, Punchy:

“This was probably the worst Marvel Now book I have read so far, just the very worst Hickman clichés all in one package.”

There you go, if you want a comic that is not new reader friendly, doesn’t explain anything, presents the first part of an undefined mystery, and provides absolutely nothing that would inspire a reader to care about what happens next, New Avengers #1 is for you.

Here’s your synopsis – Something weird happens in Wakkanda (don’t worry, it’s not explained) and the answers to what happened (no idea what that was, I think some teenagers died) and the books ends on a dramatic cliffhanger with more questions than answers. No, this isn’t a review of S.H.I.EL.D. #1 (2, 3, 4, 5, or 6) or any of the other comics Hickman has written that follows this same formula. Best part is it will only take 20 or so issues for the mystery to be clearly defined – nor for it to be solved – but for us to know what is going on.

I don’t know when it happened, and there are arguments as to who exactly is to blame for this, but it seems that there is a new group of mainstream writers that are more interested in writing THE Avengers / THE X-Men / THE InsertBookNameHere story / THE run that will be put on the same list as Claremont’s X-Men, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Joe Kelly’s Deadpool , or even Wolfman and Perez on Teen Titans rather than put in the work to write a coherent comic book that will stand the test of time, not flame out after a year or so. And, from what I can tell, Hickman is leading that charge.

By halfway through the issue I was dreading turning the page to see what would (not) happen next.

Stephen H. Epting’s pencils are spot on. The art in this issue created a nice flow that did its best to communicate what was happening in a clear and easy to follow manner, too bad about the story.

One silver lining, I had already broken my rule on no new monthlies with Avengers Arena, at least now I can save money and drop two books: New Avengers and Avengers.

I'm a big Black Panther fan, so this issue focusing solely on him didn't bother me. That said, there really wasn't much of a story to this issue. Yeah, the villains could be interesting. Yeah, the plot introduced could be interesting. It could all be really great, but there isn't enough to judge anything here. I've always found that to be unacceptable in a first issue.

4 out of 10, saved from getting lower by my sheer enjoyment of most anything featuring T'Challa.

I didn't hate this issue nearly as much as everyone else in here did. Saying that, I think it probably would have been better as an #0 issue setting up the series, considering the New Avengers don't actually show up until the final 3 pages. As others have already stated, this is basically a Black Panther solo issue that sets up a new super villain(a black swan who speaks multiple languages and knows of multiple Earths) who is paving the way for another super villain(he is referred to as the great destroyer with an endless appetite) that we don't yet know. I think the issue did a decent job of showing us how Black Panther could be considered an equal to the rest of the Illuminati. I just wanted to see more of the team. Steve Epting's art is simply gorgeous. Say what you will about the story but the art is really the highlight of this issue.